The present invention concerns a seat comprising a seat back, a cushion, a pivoting handle mounted on one of the lateral sides of the seat back and adapted to cause the seat back to tilt onto the cushion from a raised position, a rotary plate fixed under the cushion, and a pivoting lever affixed to the rotary plate and adapted to cause the cushion to rotate on itself with the seat back in the raised position.
It relates more specifically to a seat of this type mounted as a motor vehicle front seat.
Usually, the driver or passenger of an automobile experiences more problems in getting into the passenger compartment if it has a limited volume and/or accessibility. Thus, it is not easy for a passenger to reach the rear seats of a xe2x80x9csmallxe2x80x9d vehicle that only has two hinged or sliding doors at the front of the vehicle, and this in spite of the fact that the seat back can be tilted onto the base of the front seat involved.
In some types of vehicles equipped with front seats that rotate on themselves, however, it is possible to improve the accessibility to the rear seats, but at the expense of complicated operations. Indeed, the passenger must turn the handle mounted on the outer lateral side of the seat back with one hand in order to tilt the seat back onto the cushion, and, while bending down, he must simultaneously turn the lever located on the cushion with his other hand in order to rotate the cushion on itself while orienting it towards the outside of the vehicle.
The purpose of the invention is thus to propose a seat of the type mentioned above which allows the passenger to have a large accessibility to the rear seats of an automobile while being easy to manipulate.
To this effect, an object of the invention is a seat, in particular for an automobile, comprising a seat back, a cushion, a pivoting handle mounted one of the lateral sides of the seat back and adapted to cause the seat back to tilt onto the cushion from a raised position, a rotary plate fixed under the cushion and a pivoting lever fixed to the rotary plate and adapted to cause the cushion to rotate around the axis of rotation of the rotary plate with the seat back in the raised position, characterized in that it comprises means to cause the pivoting lever to rotate immediately after the pivoting of the handle so as to obtain a rotation of the cushion around the axis of rotation of the rotary plate immediately after the seat back has been tilted onto the cushion.
The seat can also comprise one or more of the following characteristics taken alone or in combination:
the means are comprised of a cable having one of its ends affixed to the rear part of the seat back and the other end affixed to the pivoting lever;
the cable is housed in a sheath;
the seat consists of tubes affixed to the lower part of the rotary plate, which extend across it, the ends of these tubes being adapted to be affixed to a floor such as a floor of an automobile;
the axis of rotation of the rotary plate is offset relative to the axis of the cushion.
The invention also concerns a motor vehicle equipped with at least one seat described above, preferably mounted as a front seat.